With Possible Theme Park, 'Hunger Games' May Live Beyond Final Film

The movie studio Lionsgate is exploring the possibility of a theme park based on The Hunger Games films and books. To test the idea's viability, the company announced that it will launch a Hunger Games exhibition at museums around the country next summer.

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This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Robert Siegel.

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And I'm Melissa Block. "The Hunger Games" movies have made a lot of people in Hollywood a lot of money. But why stop there? Lionsgate is exploring a Hunger Games theme park. Here's NPR's Neda Ulaby.

NEDA ULABY, BYLINE: This is a great idea, basing an amusement park around teenagers being forced to battle each other to the death in the service of a totalitarian state would be fun for the whole family. Maybe first you'd be greeted by a smiling lady in a towering wig and candy-colored shoes.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE HUNGER GAMES")

ELIZABETH BANKS: (As Effie Trinket) Breathe it all in, children. This is all for you.

ULABY: Then spend the day in wholesome hand-to-hand combat and playing games of chance, like tracker jacker, where you win a prize for dropping giant hives of angry wasps on people.

Lionsgate has made more than a billion-and-a-half dollars off the franchise, and it wants more. So to test the hunger of consumers, it announced today it'll send a Hunger Games exhibition to museums around the country next summer, kind of like "The Art Of The Motorcycle" or that Star Wars show with lots of props and the characters' costumes.

ULABY: The exhibition is an exploratory step to see if a theme park could be viable as well as a moneymaking venture on its own. Liongate's vice chairman, Michael Burns, appeared last month on CNBC.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

MICHAEL BURNS: It's a good time to be a content creator and distributer.

ULABY: Still the company's most recent financial report showed that during a period in which no Hunger Games movies came out, net income had dropped 70 percent. Neda Ulaby, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.